


Arrival

by TechnoSkittles



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F, Late Night Car Rides, Modern AU, okay really gay but like on the DL, that's really all I got, there isn't a plot just two girls being kinda gay, there's not much substance to this it's just a lot of nonsense really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 06:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18845752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TechnoSkittles/pseuds/TechnoSkittles
Summary: "I see you here all the time. What's that all about?""I'm waiting.""Waiting? What for?""A change."





	Arrival

She likes to walk home some nights.

Bow and Glimmer are less keen with her decision. They bombard her with concerns about safety by way of spinning horror stories of muggings and prowlers. There's probably truth to their words, but so far she's done so many times without incident, so Adora figures it can't hurt to continue.

She likes the calm, soothing atmosphere and aura the night provides. There's something...other about it, in the vaguest sense. A feeling she can't quite place, but one that feels just as familiar as her own skin. It's comforting in a way. It's exciting in others.

She walks without earphones. Opposite of her habits during the day, when everything is too loud, too busy, too  _much_. She really only uses them to construct her own space within herself but here, at night, where the world is deserted for few but her, it's as if the world is hers to thread together and breath life into just as it revitalizes her. This act also quells half of her friends' worries. So she goes without.

Her place isn't far from her job, but it's also not close. A respectable distance, nearly ideal for a late night walk. Time enough to find herself again in a world where she has to wear so many masks, play so many roles it's hard to remember and recollect by the end of it all.

The night brings out the person she is, the one she can be with no one else watching.

Most of her night walks are uneventful; people are few and far between at these hours. That's part of where the charm of these small journeys come from - the absence of life, no audience to perform for. She can breathe and unburden her shoulders from the vast weight she carries, down to just the simple messenger bag slung over her shoulder. And the people who do linger past sundown, the ones with either no place to go or nothing to rush them forward, pay her no mind. Likewise, she keeps her gaze forwards.

It isn't until one mid-summer's night that she notices she's seen the same woman perched against a road sign on three of her past walks. It's enough to give her pause, time to study the woman's features long enough to ponder her intentions and backstory that may have led her to that spot so consistently. Ultimately, she decides it's none of her business (and it isn't) before she continues on her way, passing by with hardly a second thought.

It takes seven more passing encounters for her curiosity to finally linger longer than a simple glance.

The next time, she slows her pace enough to get a good look, but not so slow to greatly lengthen her trek home or appear suspicious. She doesn't get a good enough look to carry out a proper assessment, but manages to notice the woman's unbreaking gaze across the street, face blank. First impressions would indicate the woman was bored, but later retrospection as she toes off her shoes in her apartment would come to the conclusion that she was more pensive.

She stays up an extra ten minutes that night, brushing her teeth at half the pace, staring into the mirror and trying to best mimic the expression the other woman had worn.

She goes to bed undecided.

Two nights later, the air is cooler so her pace is much more brisk. When she approaches that same spot, the woman is hunched over and scrolling through her phone, donning a weathered jacket with the hood up. The blue light illuminates her face where the street lamp cannot and Adora notices the sharp features of her nose and cheekbones that softens in the curvature of her lips, barely parted and moving rhythmically with no sound. She's half a block away when she recalls a detail she'd failed to process in the moment: the woman was wearing earphones, dangling past the hard edge of her jawline, draped across her chest.

She's never given much thought to the dangers of the night, but she spends a good eight minutes lying awake, wondering if the woman made it home safely.

When she sees the familiar figure leaning against the road sign the next night, hands in her pockets and earphones absent, she's assured and heaves an unconscious sigh of relief.

A month has gone by, life frantically pushing her forward and pulling her left and right, and Adora comes to the realization one night while heating up leftover takeout. As she watches the spinning table in the microwave, food haphazardly thrown onto a plastic plate, it occurs to her that the woman is actually quite beautiful. Against her will, she thinks of news reels and right-hand columns detailing the disappearances of pretty women like her, presumed to be trafficked or murdered.

The food tastes sour (she argues it's because it was a week old). Most of it ends up in the trash and she goes to bed to slip into a restless sleep.

Soon enough, it rises to the point where she hopes to see the woman in that spot, holds her breath as she walks down that stretch of the sidewalk, eyes strained far ahead to catch a glimpse of wild hair. And each time she does see her, a wave of relief crashes over, bathing her in the serenity of night she seeks out on each of her walks.

She had always seen the night as hers to take and wear for her own, to clothe her in it's dim majesty and surreal properties as rejuvenation for the stressors that plagued her throughout her working hours. But in just the course of a little over a month, Adora began to mind less and less the thought of sharing the night with this stranger, if only it meant that she could see her again and again.

Two months. She's walking towards the woman who seems preoccupied by something on her phone when Adora's own phone buzzes in her pocket. She fishes it out, assuming it's Glimmer inquiring on her whereabouts or rushing her to get home because they'd set aside the night to binge watch some TV series with Bow since none of them had work the next day - a rare occurrence. But the phone is tumbling from her grasp, dancing over her clumsy fingers then clattering to the sidewalk and she nearly trips over herself to try and catch it.

The sudden movements and noise seems to catch the attention of the woman. Adora picks up her phone and looks up in time to notice a pair of eyes - lit by the streetlamp, she notices that one is blue and the other an almost golden brown - staring back at her. By the time Adora has straightened herself out with her phone now tightly clutched in hand, the woman has turned away again.

Blue and brown in the streets shine brightest on the rest of her way home.

Another couple of weeks pass without much more incident. Adora notices more minute things about the woman, ranging from behavior to appearance, but nothing much comes from these observations aside from a growing curiosity. Some powerful force within her to confront these nonexistent interactions, to nurture and grow them into something...else.

The nights begin to shift in a way that she can't pin down.

She thinks of telling Bow and Glimmer about the strange woman on her walks, but fear of their overzealous caution and even more overbearing questions stop her. She's not sure what to make of this woman. She's even less sure that she wants to share her existence.

Another night comes and Adora's leaving her work building much later than normal. The hours she's endured have been far more grueling and demanding. Thoughts of the mystery woman are buried under the innate desire to collapse and sleep away the next two days before she has work again. Her gait is sluggish. Her eyes are drooping and the night feels heavier than normal. The walk home begins to feel more like a chore with each step she takes and somewhere about halfway through, she begins to wish she had taken a bus or something else home instead.

Not too far from the place that she normally spots the woman, she falls onto a bench, digging through her bag for her phone and in just under a minute, calls an Uber to take her home. There's one fairly nearby and she only has to wait a few minutes until she's been picked up.

In the backseat of the car, the night passes her by. Through lidded eyes she watches it lazily, fantasizing about tucking herself into her comforter and letting exhaustion sink her into a dreamless sleep.

When they pause at a stop light, the dim red hue illuminating the front dashboard, Adora lets her head roll over to her right. Immediately, she snaps to attention, eyes wide and brows lifted. There, on the sidewalk, the woman is spread out on a sidewalk bench, hair tucked into a ponytail and a cloud trailing from her lips, sensuously caressing them in its slow ascent before dissipating into nothingness.

The light turns green. But before they pull off, Adora watches as she takes another drag from a device wrapped in her grip, another cloud expelling into the night, painting her face in a fog.

It's only near the end of the summer that Adora finally makes a decision. On her next walk, sure enough, the woman is there again, sitting on the bench once more. There's nothing there to distract her, nothing to preoccupy her attention that would jeopardize any of Adora's attempts to open up the night to something she'd never considered in all of her previous walks home.

As she approaches her, Adora runs through all of her considerations again on the strangeness of her intentions. As far as they're both concerned, they're strangers. Adora only knows her through passings and it's almost certain the other woman has barely given her much thought at all. But there's a stubborn curiosity that has been simmering for weeks and Adora fears that unless she acts on it, she may very well go mad.

Instead of walking by as per usual, Adora slows her pace until she's stopped behind the bench. Giving the woman only seconds to become aware of her presence, she speaks up.

"I see you here all the time. What's that all about?"

The woman turns her head, a brief flash of surprise rolling over her features before it relaxes into something more neutral. Adora can see the calculated precision of consideration in her eyes, watches as they roam up and down her figure, before there's a snap and something more carefree overtakes her. "I'm waiting."

A simple enough answer. One that she was probably lucky to receive at all, all things considered. Still…

"Waiting? What for?"

The woman turns away as she shrugs, gaze cast across the street, but eyes looking into something further than that. "A change."

Adora bites the inside of her cheek and flexes her grip on the strap of her bag. "What kind of change?"

"Dunno." Her tone is so casual. In it is laced something that Adora reaches for, wishes to draw out, to bring closer, to intertwine with her own being. She's not sure why. "Figured I'd find out once it comes 'round."

She wants to know more, but she starts to get the feeling she's overstayed. So she simply nods and swivels on her heel. "Well, best of luck then."

Then she walks away without another word. And some part of her hopes that she'll be pulled back.

It's a week later when the woman steps into her path - literally. She's propped up against the building aligned at her usual spot - a storefront for a shop that's been out of business for almost a year now. She cuts off Adora's path and stands there facing her, lips pulled back as she analyzes her acutely.

And Adora stands there, letting her.

It feels silly, but the first words out of her mouth are: "Find that change yet?"

The woman hums, considering her question. "Maybe. Why do you walk through here all the time?"

Adora adjusts her bag. "To get home."

"No, why do you  _really_  do it?"

Adora doesn't answer immediately, doesn't know how or if she should even disclose that sort of thing when it's not something she's really told  _anyone_. It wasn't exactly a secret, but somehow she was worried that if she said it out loud, something might permanently shift and would render everything pointless again.

They stare each other down for a few seconds. Finally, "You should be careful. Young women like you might get hurt being out this late." It's automatic. It sounds like she's channeled the rhetoric of Bow and Glimmer.

The woman gives a short laugh and something in the night stirs. The stars spin above them, the noises of the night whirl around her head, the lights flash intensely before dimming back down. "That's rich, coming from you."

Adora feels oddly defensive. "At least I know where I'm going."

The woman across from her shrugs before stepping away to lean against the wall again. "Maybe that's your problem."

Adora lingers for a couple extra seconds, waiting for her to say something else. Once it's clear that the conversation has ended, she walks away, with more purpose, back home.

They don't speak to each other again for another few nights. When they do the woman is perched on the hood of some car parked on the side of the street, idly twirling a set of keys on her finger. Adora absolutely intends to keep on walking and ignore her completely, their last conversation fresh in her mind and indignation fresher in her chest, but a shout catches her attention. When she stops long enough to give the woman a glance, she's met with a crooked smile, twisted with mischief.

"Feel up for a ride?"

Adora scrunches up her nose - a habit that Glimmer once pointed out before cooing over it - and crosses her arms. "I'm fine walking home, thanks."

"Who said anything about going home?"

Adora bites the inside of her cheek and glances down the sidewalk, mindful to anyone who might be watching. "I have work in the morning. I can't be out that late."

The woman's quiet for a short moment and Adora almost takes that as an end to the conversation. Just before she can walk off, however, she speaks up again. "Ever think about the extent of free will?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

The woman leans back on one hand with the other still busy twirling the set of keys. "We have the ability to choose to do whatever we want. The autonomy to pick a path and take it," she snaps her fingers, "just like that."

Adora rolls her shoulders and narrows her eyes. "Not without consequence."

"Ever consider that the consequences might not be worth worrying about?"

"That's reckless," she points out.

The woman grins wider and leans forward. "What's life without a little bit of recklessness?"

Bow and Glimmer would be horrified to know how little Adora considered her options before replying. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"You don't."

And like that, Adora knew she could. Somehow.

In just a minute, she's seated in the passenger seat of this stranger's car as she revs the engine until it purrs with life. Her messenger bag is discarded somewhere in the backseat and she's leaned forward, fingers drumming against the dash.

"Where did you have in mind?" she asks as they're pulling out.

"Nowhere." A smile. "Anywhere."

So Adora leans back with a small nod and faces forward. "Alright. Okay."

They're speeding down the street and Adora only briefly watches the scenery blur past them before she decides she actually doesn't want to watch any of it. Instead, she looks over at her odd companion, studying all those features she's catalogued over months-time and feeling strangely more at ease than she has in awhile.

"Name's Catra," the woman says, not taking her eyes off the road.

Catra. Adora wants to taste that name on her tongue, laden with the sickly heavy musk of the night that bound them together. "I'm-"

"A change." A blue eye flicks her way for just a moment.

She chuckles softly. "Close. Adora."

Catra clicks her tongue and presses the gas, coasting them through a yellow-light that turns red before they're halfway through. "Alright, Adora. Let's see where this night takes us."

**Author's Note:**

> Not really sure what the intents/purpose was here. Just went into a feverish writing frenzy and this is the result. Haven't really written much in ages because life has really taken most of my energy so felt I needed to just pound this one out.
> 
> I like listening to music and building an aesthetic around that sometimes, even if it ends up being nonsensical. So this is the result of me listening to Aether's new album (particularly Somewhere in Japan Parts 1 &2).
> 
> For those who like more substance, I'm currently working on Pure Feeling ch 3. Hoping to get that up in the next couple of weeks (before I leave for my month-long study abroad trip).


End file.
